


Lives Askance

by va_va_voom



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Major character death - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-22
Updated: 2013-07-22
Packaged: 2017-12-21 00:12:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/893538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/va_va_voom/pseuds/va_va_voom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes fate is not enough, even when it seems like it should be.</p><p>Set in the same universe, but under the premise that Shepard is just really not cut out for the military.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lives Askance

"Do you believe in God?"

The question marked the turning point between a meaningless exploration into sex with a turian and the tenuous beginnings of something else. The silvery turian with the blue markings across his face deeply intrigued Sarah Shepard, a woman who had previously held no interest in turians of any kind.  But something pulled her in when she saw him sitting at the bar in Chora's Den, and they ended up back in Shepard's apartment a short time later.

"Not in the slightest."  At Shepard's quizzical expression, he sighed and added to the thought.  "It's just, it's really hard to believe in an all-powerful being in the sky that knows everything and can control everything, especially when so much bad happens in the galaxy."  He paused and fixed his blue eyes on Shepard's brown ones.  "No deity that existed would ever be so unjust to its own creations."

"Huh."

Shepard had already asked several questions of the turian along a similar vein.  He always answered altruistically, and always on the side of what Shepard judged to be the side of justice.

"Why are you a janitor and not, like, C-Sec?  Or something like that."

The turian, who had only told her his first name, fell silent for a moment before answering with, "I owed a debt."  Shepard attempted to prod further, but got nothing for her efforts.

"I thought turians always owned up to their actions," Shepard jabbed.

"Well, I guess I'm not a very good turian.  Although, to be fair, it wasn't anything that I did that put me here."  At that point, Shepard didn’t want to push the issue any further.

After a few minutes of amicable silence, an alarm started going off on Shepard's side of the bed, which she swatted down reluctantly.

"My transport leaves in an hour."  She stood from the bed gingerly, wincing as her knees popped.  "I'm on a ship headed back to Earth.  Got a job doing construction for some volus company who's building a custom-made housing subdivision."  She rolled her eyes dramatically, eliciting a "hah!" from the turian.

He regarded Shepard for a moment as she dressed.  Her white shirt slipped over her torso after a sports bra of the same color, then a pair of overallls buckled on over her shoulders.  Garrus decided, as she ran a hand through her short, bed-mussed hair, that she looked much better naked.

"You seem like a woman of action," he said after a time, as he began his own process of dressing.   "Why aren't you in your military?"

She smirked.  "I owed a debt."  The snort her response brought from the turian made her feel less bad about dodging the question.  But it was true in a way, she decided, thinking back to the promise she had made to her father several years before.

"Hey," she said, as Garrus was about to leave.  "I happen to know that I'll be back here on the Citadel in a year.  Like, exactly a year."  She stopped to grab her keys from the counter of the kitchenette and to flick out the lights.  "We should meet up again."

"We'll see," Garrua replied with what Shepard could only interpret as a smirk.

The year passed slowly, with ominous reports of an imminent war.  The first human SPECTRE, Kaidan Alenko, routed a former turian SPECTRE and his army of geth at the Citadel, as well as some giant machine called a "Reaper."  Even though the Council, now with a human member, assured the galaxy that the Reaper threat was extinguished, there was still a slight undercurrent of anxiety, especially since Alenko urged people to believe that Sovereign was not the only one.

Shepard had met Alenko once, on the Citadel, in passing. She was on her way to her transport back to Earth, after her night with Garrus, and she quite literally bumped into him as she exited the elevator.

They exchanged quick apologies before Alenko went on with what Shepard assumed was his important SPECTRE work. She got the distinct impression that he was a good man. Under other circumstances, _in another life,_ she thought, though she didn't know why that exact phrase came to mind, Shepard could see herself being romantically involved with him. 

_Darn,_ she thought, without much regret.

When Shepard returned to the Citadel, exactly on schedule, the first place she went was Chora's Den. However, the turian was not there. Shepard waited for as long as she dared (which amounted to about three glasses of whiskey) before leaving a message with the barkeep and heading back to her apartment.

Garrus walked into the bar at what would have been Shepard's sixth glass. He looked around briefly before settling at the bar and deciding that, if Shepard were there, she would find him.

At two glasses of dextro-whiskey, the bartender finally realized that Garrus was the intended recipient of Shepard's message and handed the napkin over.

_I came, but you weren't here. You know where the find me instead._

_-SS_

Garrus chuckled, downed the rest of his drink, and took a cab to Shepard's apartment. It was the same one from the year before, an Alliance investment on behalf of Shepard's dead mother. It guaranteed that there was always a place for the late Hannah Shepard's family on the Citadel, and in the same neighborhood as the largely unused apartments of other war heroes.

"What do you think of this war that that SPECTRE says is coming?" Shepard asked after they'd finished their physical tryst.

"I'm inclined to believe him, if that's what you're asking." And the intellectual tryst began.

They sat for a while in silent agreement.

"I've almost finished my term here as a janitor," Garrus announced after a time. "I think I'm going to join the army."

"Why?"

"Didn't you hear?" asked Garrus with a twinkle in his eye. "There's going to be a war."

"I think I might join the Alliance Navy, too."

"I thought you were a construction worker. Aren't you a bit late by human standards?"

"A nail gun can't be that different from a real gun," Shepard said with a laugh. However, she internally acknowledged that there was some truth to what Garrus had said. While Garrus had no doubt undergone the compulsory turian military service and was trained with firearms, Shepard had never held a real gun in her life.

"It just feels like I should be out there, you know?"

Garrus knew. He felt a similar compulsion, pulling them both toward the coming conflict.

"I thought you owed a debt, though," jabbed the turian with a mandibled smirk.

"My debt is paid," Shepard responded, but she was unable to match his mirth.

Garrus didn't push her any further.

They parted ways soon after, with another pledge to meet back on the Citadel in a year.

"I'll be here if you need me," Shepard had told him.

"I was going to say the same thing to you," he replied with a laugh.

They couldn't explain their attraction, nor did they try. It was as mysterious as the pull of the war, yet felt as natural to each as ordinary gravity.

Shepard managed to procrastinate on her enlistment paperwork until Alenko was killed. Her enlistment date was the same day as Alenko's funeral, and when she saw the televised service, she felt as though someone was walking over her grave.

Shepard was nearly recycled out of basic training.

"You're definitely not your mother, Shepard," was the one remark that stuck with her. It came from Admiral Hackett himself at her long-awaited graduation, and it was the only thing she remembered from that day.

The one-year mark rolled around again, and Shepard finegled a week of shore leave at the Citadel. Garrus showed up on the second day, still in military armor.

" _Lieutenant_ Vakarian?" Shepard questioned, feeling a smack of jealousy.

"Apparently, I'm a crack shot with a sniper rifle," he answered, chuckling.

"I could've told you that." The entendre didn't go unnoticed.

After a crack shot that left them both gasping for air, they laid back against the headboard and shared a companionable silence. Neither had much to say, but it wasn't awkward or uncomfortable.

"I have another six days here," Shepard whispered, not wanting to truly break the silence, but also not wanting to let it linger for so long that it led Garrus to the door.

"I have four."

They spent the four days together doing things that weren't quite "couples' things," but which were certainly more than "friends' things." The four nights were celebrated with takeout and sex, and that was enough for them.

"Hey, Shepard," Garrus called out as he was about to board his transport back to Menae. "Let's do this again sometime!"

"Next year!" she replied, sincerely looking forward to it.

She spent her two remaining days looking fondly on her previous four.

On their third day together, Shepard had woken up alone. The thought briefly crossed her mind that Garrus had left her, but she wasn't worried. He came back within an hour of her waking, bearing a cheesy gift from the human embassy.

"I saw this yesterday when we were walking by," he said with only a hint of sheepishness. "And, well..."

It was a small stuffed bear holding a heart with the words "MEANT 2 B" embroidered on the front.

"I heard it was some human thing called 'Valenpines Day,' or something like that."

Shepard couldn't help her laughter at Garrus' mispronunciation, but she pressed her forehead to his to show that she wasn't ridiculing him.

"It's perfect," she said, pecking a kiss to his nose. "Thank you."

She thought it was a bit eerie, though she would never tell him, because that was exactly how it felt. It was as though, in some other life or plane of existence, they had been glued together. She felt that the ends of their souls had been pinched together when they were tossed out into the universe, making it so that no matter how much distance or how many stars separated them, they would always be pulled back to each other.

On their final day together, Garrus suggested they play a new immersive reality game based on the geth attack on the Citadel. "To get back in the swing of things?" Shepard asked him.

"You could say that."

Once in the game, Garrus made Shepard take the lead. "It just feels right," he insisted. "I've got your six."

They carved a path together through the game, with people on the outside commenting that they were a 'well-oiled machine,' which brought a snicker from the both of them. Shepard didn't tell, but she used the targeting assistance feature. Garrus (and the onlookers) would likely have felt cheated, but Shepard sorely needed the computerized help.

The rest of the year went by with stirrings of rumors about the dead SPECTRE Alenko fighting the Collectors, and suddenly it was all confirmed and the SPECTRE was truly back from the dead. Human colonies in the Terminus Systems had started disappearing in earnest just before Alenko's highly publicized return, and Alliance patrols along the border were increased. Shepard's ship was tasked out for one in early February.

Garrus spent that week alone in Shepard's apartment on the Citadel.

He only pried into her stuff a little bit - most things of significance were probably with Shepard herself - and he didn't find anything more than a formerly missing sock. It was still an unexpected insight into Shepard's life. She didn't have much, whether by choice or chance, and she didn't seem to care.

It dawned on him slowly that perhaps her independence was what drew him to her.

 _Maybe that's what it is,_ he thought. _Maybe she just has a strong presence, and that's why I'm so..._ He searched for the right word, but couldn't quite find it.

But he knew that, no, that's not why they were so drawn to each other. It was a force beyond either of their powers of explanation, and all of the things they could think of as 'proper reasons' were merely rationalizations.

The week passed slowly for Garrus. When it was over, he left without ceremony.

Over the next year, there was relative quiet. Shepard's patrols continued, although they were relaxed after Alenko came back and announced the defeat of the Collectors. Even though the SPECTRE urged that more Reapers like Sovereign were coming, few in the Alliance Navy took any action.

They got together on the Citadel without any planning. It was exactly one year from when Garrus had stayed alone, and two years since they had seen each other last. Both had gone to the Citadel hoping that the other would be there.

When Shepard's apartment door chimed, a sliver of hope shot though her. She immediately pushed it down, not wanting to be disappointed, but she also couldn't think of who else it could be.

So when she opened the door to Garrus, looking more rugged and hard-edged than she had ever seen him, she had to bite back the compulsion to gasp in delight. She decided instead to feign disinterest.

"Lieutenant Vakarian," she said, as smoothly as she could manage. The surprise at actually finding Shepard was clearly splayed across Garrus' face, and he entered the apartment with the tingling pangs of excitement nibbling at his insides.

"Actually, it's 'Lieutenant _Commander_ ," he said with a thick drawl of sarcasm, indicating the symbol emblazoned on his uniform.

"You haven't even taken off your uniform yet!"

"I uh," his mandibles flicked sheepishly. "I came here as soon as I got off the transport."

"That can't be very comfortable," Shepard said, in a voice just above a whisper, and with that particular quirk of her mouth that suggested just the kind of intent that accompanied the removal of clothing.

The resultant actions were emotive and fiery, burning them both up in the smouldering nova that they had come to year for over the course of the past few years. It contained every emotion that they had wished to share with each other, and released them all at once in a brilliantly florid burst that left both of them gulping down oxygen.

For the longest time, they held each other as closely as possible, neither wanting to separate and lose the sensation of being one singular entity. But the sudden harshness of the glare from both of their omni-tools robbed them of the sensation anyway, so they reluctantly untangled.

****FLASH FLASH FLASH X1A.34****

ALL ALLIANCE MILITARY PERSONNEL: THIS IS A GALAXY-WIDE ALERT FOR ALL HUMAN TERRITORIES. FLEET ADMIRAL HACKETT HAS DECLARED THREAT CONDITION SABER ONE. ENEMY PRESENCE CONFIRMED IN SOL SYSTEM. EARTH UNDER REAPER ATTACK.

Shepard sensed Garrus tense up next to her and inferred that Palaven was similarly threatened. Both of their reluctance to part turned to anxious obligation - both felt the inexorable call of the battle that they both knew they belonged in, and neither of them were going to neglect their duties, even for so deep a personal attachment.

"Hey," Shepard called out to Garrus, just as he was about to leave. "When this is over, we meet back here, okay?"

"Assuming that there is a 'here' to come back to."

And they parted ways.

The war was not a long one. After a three-month deployment of fighting husks on Menae, Garrus was called away on the final assault to retake the Citadel from Earth. He was to be part of a team supporting Alenko in London, and he was told many times that the trip down was likely to be his squad's last. However, after losing all but one of his teammates, Garrus saw the end of the Reaper threat. The Citadel had been the missing component to the top-secret project, and Alenko had gotten to it just in time. However, nobody knew what happened to the SPECTRE - all anyone knew was that the Reapers were gone.

Many months later, parts of the Citadel had been restored to working order, including the apartments that belonged to the Shepard family. He rang the bell first to see if she had beaten him there. When she didn't answer, he entered he lock code and decided to wait for her inside.

After a week, the thought that she may not be coming bubbled up to the surface of Garrus' mind. He forcibly decided to not think about it.

It took three more days before someone noticed that Garrus had become a regular fixture of the area. It was an Alliance lieutenant, staying in an apartment elsewhere, but on a visit to see the place where the great Captain Hannah Shepard had lived.

"Hey, what are you doing in there?"

"I'm a guest of Captain Shepard's daughter."

"Oh wow! She has a daughter?" The lieutenant was dumbstruck. "Can I talk to her? Is she there?"

"I, uh," Garrus sighed. "I don't know where she is for sure." The words fell away from him like bits of stone, and for a moment, Garrus was sure that the lieutenant would have to pick them up off the ground to understand. "She was supposed to meet me back here after the war, but she hasn't gotten here yet."

The look of pitying comprehension that crossed the lieutenant's face in that instant made Garrus want to scream and claw at the walls and crash through a window because he knew. Even without the intel or reports, even without any kind of evidence or eyewitness testimony, the lieutenant knew what Garrus had been refusing to even consider.

The internal outburst that Garrus was having must have made itself apparent in his body language, because the lieutenant quickly threw on the mask of mildly sympathetic military composure that was meant to be neutral and calming but never quite managed to be.

"Well, uh..." The lieutenant idled uncertainly for a moment. "If you want to find out where she is, you can go to the Human Embassy." He gave a thin smile. "As long as you know her name, you can search the database. Unless she was way undercover, it should have everything you need to find her."

Then the lieutenant left.

Four more days passed before Garrus finally accepted that Shepard was probably not coming. He had known it since the week prior, and well before the lieutenant had come. But he had refused to accept even the possibility that Shepard hadn't survived the war. It just seemed so profoundly wrong to him to think that she hadn't come out screaming on the other side.

He finally pulled himself to the ambassador's office.

The line to get to the terminal wasn't long, but toe Garrus it looked like a mass suicide attempt - far more people walked away looking dead than alive.

He froze when he got to the terminal. He knew that the people behind him were just as anxious for their own answers, but he couldn't bring himself to move. Finally, just as the asari behind him started to get restless, he opened the search function on the terminal.

"Sarah Shepard."

It took a moment to load, but when it finally did, Garrus forgot how to read. His eyes moved idly around the page before settling on a single field.

**Status: KIA**

The news slammed into him with the full weight of each and every day that he had put off finding out, and in the same way that the ground hits a person who jumps off a roof. Even though he had seen it coming and thought himself prepared, the confirmation still knocked all of the air out of him and and let him breathe back only grief. He wished that he had hit real ground instead of the metaphysical kind.

He felt a keening wail building in his subvocals, and he knew that it would cause a scene to every other turian in the area. He did his best to swallow it down and leave, but that just turned it into a gurgled whine that was audible to everyone as he stumbled away like a drunkard.

"Excuse me," the asari that had been behind him in the queue approached him from behind. "I'm assuming you're Garrus Vakarian?"

He pulled as much composure together as he could, even managing to yank the distress out of his subvocals, but thankfully she continued before he had to answer.

"There's a message for you. You must have missed it - it was at the bottom of the page by the back button."

It took a moment before her words finally filtered through the haze of Garrus' grief.

"Thanks," he said. He stumbled back to the terminal and, just as the asari had said, there was an entry in the "special notes" field at the bottom of the page.

 **MESSAGES FOR:**

  * MARCUS, GALENA
  * KLEIN, JOHNATHAN
  * VAKARIAN, GARRUS



The first two he assumed to be friends or relatives, but only as a passing thought. His entire purpose for existing had become the retrieval of her message. He simultaneously needed and dreaded it.

He talked to one of the embassy clerks and had the message, a single audio file, uploaded to his omni-tool. For a moment, the thought of listening to it right then and there tempted him powerfully, but Garrus resolved to wait until he got back to the apartment.

When he finally did, he fidgeted and fussed for as long as he could manage before leaning against the now-spotless kitchenette counter and playing the file.

"Garrus." Shepard's voice, gravelly and unfamiliar coming from the omni-tool instead of the pillow next to him, was like a punch in the gut. "I'm going to die here. Don't ask me how I know, but I can feel it. We're about to come through the Charon relay for the final strike on Earth, but everything feels wrong." He heard her take a deep breath. "I can't explain it.

"And I know," her voice was suddenly strained, "I know somehow that we're supposed to be together right now. But, as much as I want to live though this and meet you back at the Citadel like we planned, I don't think I'll be able to do it."

She sniffed. "I've never held a gun before in my life, Garrus! I mean, Christ! Alliance training was good, and I practice as much as I can, but I'm still just another soldier. The odds aren't good for me, Garrus, and I feel unprepared and out of place. There's nowhere I'd rather be, except for with you, but I shouldn't be here like this. Not like this."

She sighed, and Garrus saw her in his mind, afraid and upset and so, so sorry for something that, to her, hadn't even happened yet. But he sensed her making an attempt to pull herself back together.

"But that's not really why I'm leaving this message for you.

"Out of all of the times we've talked, and all the things we talked about, I never once really told you how I felt about you. How I _feel_ about you, and always will.

"I bought you a blanket." Garrus felt himself stop breathing. "It's in the closet, at the very top and on the far left. If I make it through this, then we'll sleep under it together. But if you are there without me, please take it. Take it and leave, Garrus, and never look back. If you're hearing this message at all, then that means that we did it. We won, Garrus, and if it cost me my life, then you owe it to me to make it count. You go live the life that I couldn't, and make it one that I'd be jealous of."

She paused and Garrus heard her suck in a breath. She had obviously started crying while recording.

"Goodbye, Garrus."

And Garrus, in the throes of his grief, keened and wailed and railed against the universe and the spirits and the Reapers and anything else he could think of for taking Shepard from him. But then he calmed down. The stillness in his soul was sudden and disquieting in its placid silence, but it gave Garrus the clarity to look ahead.

He hoped then. He hoped, as he grabbed the blanket out of the closet and threw it over his shoulders, that there _was_ a god, and that he was forgiving enough to let him be with Shepard again as he left to live the only life he could imagine without her. He traveled on a bullet with a prayer and, for the moment of his departure, managed to make himself believe that there was, in fact, a god.

**Author's Note:**

> Wow hey guys look it's a Mass Effect fanfic. My first and definitely not my last - the game was just too good to not pay heavy tribute.  
> I hope that this isn't too weird and artsy. The thought came to me - "what if circumstances had kept Shepard away from the military?" And then I decided to flirt with you, the reader, in a very meta way. I hope I didn't come across as too much of a twat.


End file.
